#BEANCOUNTER ADDON FULL#
#BEANCOUNTER ADDON SOFTWARE#
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#BEANCOUNTER ADDON SOFTWARE#

This is how the software knows what components need to be connected to each other on the PCB. This is so the software can convert the wires in your schematic into ‘nets’, which is a set of minimum point to point connections that is equivalent to the human-friendly schematic.

It is so important in fact, that all modern PCB design software requires a schematic to be completed (well, at least started). Schematicīefore one considers designing a PCB, one first needs to design and finalize a schematic. Art, history, philosophy.and all this will mean something” - Capt.

#BEANCOUNTER ADDON SERIES#

At our disposal we have about 100 years of development of this technology, from the first patents in the early 1900’s, to the first mass produced PCBs in the 1950s for personal radios, to the development of the RS-274 Gerber standard developed in the 1970s, which is still (more or less) used today.Īs much as I would love to write an entire blog series on the history of PCB design and manufacturing, it would be a deviation from my official mandate, and beyond the scope of this semi-educational blog… though I do encourage you to check out the following links as a primer to all of this: However, we design PCBs atop the shoulders of giants. The basic PCB design/manufacturing principles and methodology is still the same for most consumer electronics. Although PCB and IC technology has advanced tremendously since then, to an untrained eye, PCBs and motherboards from the late mid to late 90s look the same as they do now. From the first TV remote I took apart to building and repairing PCs with my dad as a kid, green circuit boards with a mix of through-hole and SMT were already in every consumer electronics device on the market. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk PCBA design! In this blog post, I'll cover the following:Īs a millenial, PCBs have always been a part of my life. Just try to keep it in your head and don’t vocalize it, as people find that annoying. “What do my checklists look like? What kinds of little loops run in my head while I'm laying out a board? How can I quantify and justify the artistic, intuitive and perhaps bizarre aspects of what I do? What design practices have I picked up from my experience working in research, start-up environments and now at an ODM?” Most importantly, “What have I learned over a modest hardware engineering career of incredible success and equally fantastical ups?”įirst pro-tip: Ask yourself questions. “What are the main things I worry about when I design the types of PCBs I work on?”.

#BEANCOUNTER ADDON FULL#

The internet is so full of easily searchable information on PCB design, that I doubted myself and the significance of a possible contribution, and seriously wondered if there was anything I could offer to other PCB designers. I’m always happy to help, but I was unsure as to how, or if, I could pull it off. One recent humdinger from our marketing manager: “Hey, could you write a blog post on good PCB design practices for manufacturability, production and reliability?” As Blue Clover Device's hardware designer, I get a lot of requests and questions from the team, as well as clients, for projects and explanations.

Beancounter addon